Your Organization Doesn’t Need a Crisis to Have a Trust Problem

In a time of increasing polarization, there’s one thing we can all agree on: trust in business is critical. Organizations that have visible leaders, are clear about their values, understand their stakeholders and are prepared for uncertainty are better equipped to build trust before a crisis hits and emerge stronger on the other side. 

Business reputations can be made or broken during a crisis. But trust issues can also arise outside of a full-blown crisis. The speed, scale and complexity of modern business operations require leaders to focus on continuously fostering trust within and outside their organization, yet one-third of organizations do not practice trust-building strategies. Make sure your organization is not one of them. 

The following warning signs could signal your organization has a trust problem:  

1. Your executives aren’t visible to your team 

Leaders are consistently cited as the most trusted sources of information. Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer found that 78% of respondents trust their employer and 64% trust businesses. That trust increases when the source is part of one’s local network. For example, respondents are more likely to trust their CEO versus an executive from another business. While leaders play a unique role in building trust, we recognize it’s not a natural skill for all leaders. But leadership communication is a coachable skill. 

Equipping leaders with communication coaching and tools to create feedback loops helps build trust and accountability with their employees. This can include:  

• Training leaders to communicate transparently in uncertainty: Host scenario-based workshops that simulate difficult conversations, real-time decision-making and message crafting in high-stakes moments. Include EQ development alongside technical communication skills. 
   

• Creating safe spaces to practice listening deeply across stakeholder groups: Facilitate employee listening sessions, peer coaching cohorts or roundtables where leaders hear directly from teams and are coached to stay engaged and responsive. Stakeholder listening works best when leaders model a culture that invites upward and peer feedback without fear of retribution through post-project reviews or quarterly team reflections.
   

• Reinforcing accountability and modeling learning from mistakes and incorporating learning agility into leadership performance management systems. 

These practices help leaders build the skills to respond with speed, authenticity and empathy and build trust when it matters most. 

2. Audiences are unclear about your values and priorities 

A couple of surefire ways to weaken trust and reputation include:  

• Walking back on your previously stated values and commitments 

• Staying silent and allowing misinformation or rumors to swirl 

Most leaders don’t intend to do either of those things, but it can happen. Sometimes leaders are trying to save face, reshaping a story when something doesn’t go as planned. Others may be actively determining how to tackle an emerging issue, like how the rise of AI solutions will impact roles and team structures in an organization, and end up waiting too long to communicate updates to their employees.  

Living out values consistently — from strategic decision-making to day-to-day operations — prepares teams and leaders to lean into and uphold these values in stressful moments. And that builds trust. 

Living organizational values can take many forms, including:
  

• Leaders asking, “would this align with our values?” to guide decisions, build strategy and support culture  

• Employees seeing leaders embody values each day, which helps them trust leaders to respond similarly in a crisis  

• Internal messaging consistently grounded in an organization’s overall purpose/mission and values and in shared agreements for how teams operate 

3. Lack of visibility into what matters most to stakeholders 

Trust and values are directly linked to brand loyalty and engagement. 88% of customers will buy again from a brand they trust.  

That’s where social listening and AI visibility tools play an important role in understanding external sentiment. Sprout Social found that 94% of business leaders believe insights gathered from social media data and activity have a major impact on building brand reputation and loyalty. AI visibility, also known as GEO or AEO, reflects how your organization appears in AI-generated answers. Because AI responses draw from websites, earned media, thought leadership, reviews, rankings and other third-party sources, an AI visibility report can provide a snapshot of your organization’s reputation across your communication ecosystem.  

If organizations aren’t tapped into how their audiences are feeling or what they’re saying, they lose the opportunity to build trust by responding to or addressing concerns, questions or preferences. 

Established trust and a clear plan are the keys to successful crisis response 

The ability to build and regularly nurture trust is critical in a business environment that increasingly brings challenges, change and the potential for crises. And trust built over time creates a reserve of goodwill that can be drawn upon when the stakes are highest. However, trust alone isn’t enough. Organizations also need a clear, current plan for how they will respond when it is tested. 

Crisis and issue planning is most effective when managed as a living system that evolves with the business, the market and the world. Leaders should regularly look beyond the moment and scan for trends in their industry — or in adjacent industries — to anticipate potential challenges that could threaten trust. 

A crisis communication audit provides a clear view of an organization’s readiness to respond and guidance on how it can be strengthened.